Star Wars: Battlefront III
2006: New Beginnings In June 2006, Free Radical Design was contacted by LucasArts, regarding the creation of a sequel to the highly successful Battlefront II. Despite the fact that Free Radical Design did not do work for hire, the fact that they would be working with the Star Wars license was a game-changer, as many of the employees were fans of the franchise. The game was originally only meant for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. 2007: Smooth Sailing Work continued on the game, with LucasArts seeing hope for the project. Mid-2007, it was decided that the game would no longer be console exclusive, with Microsoft Windows (and Nintendo Wii) conversions being planned. On October 2007, LucasArts hired Rebellion and N-Space, for the development of Playstation 2/Portable and Nintendo DS versions respectively. They would be using assets and builds sent by Free Radical Design (or LucasArts) to use as reference. These assets however, were sometimes remade entirely, due to the originals being of 'questionable quality'. The lack of material being sent later on would lead to changes in Rebellion's design (hence the differences between Battlefront III and Elite Squadron PSP). Whilist the DS version was more accurate, it is unknown if they had more reference available, or started development earlier. 2008: Doomsday The beginning of the end. The Haze team is struggling after having to delay the game, and Ubisoft sends producers over to get the game ready. These producers are very harsh on the team and morale is dropping, with rumors appearing that Free Radical Design is sending Battlefront III developers, and using LucasArts money to work on Haze - though as the circumstances would later show, there was no other way. In January 2008, Steve Ellis and David Doak talk with LucasArts about delaying the release of the game to April 2009. This is allowed, but soon led to more troubles. Jim Ward left LucasArts on the 4th of February 2008, and in the 2nd of April, Darrell Rodriguez came to take his place. A massive amount of staff lost their jobs, an entire layer of managment was removed, and many projects were cancelled. LucasArts’ and Free Radical Design’s relationship would soon corrupt After the May milestone (same month as Haze’s release), LucasArts refuses to pass milestones and pay Free Radical Design. Free Radical Design reluctantly agreed to compromise on their contact with LucasArts, but the sum of money they were offered (in order to prevent going to court), was smaller than what contractually agreed on at the start. With the company running out of money, they had no choice. LucasArts was a big spender in marketing, but for unknown reasons, they did not want to commit to spending big for this project. Assumptions regarding completion go from 75%-99% / 6-12 months of development left. Free Radical Design had its last Christmas party in 2008. On December 18, staff were redirected to a nearby hotel after seeing the offices being locked. 145 people lost their jobs, with a mere 40 left to keep the company running. The company was moved to the hands of administrators ReSolve, who paid all staff up to the end of December. Sometime in 2008/2009, a parody video was created by Graeme Norgate mocking the situation between Free Radical Design and LucasArts - an email sent by Darrell Rodriguez demanding the removal of it was denied. This was the final blow to Battlefront III. Free Radical Design was purchased by Crytek on the third of February, and got a name change; they now were Crytek UK. 2009: Resurrection During the final months of Free Radical Design’s game, Rebellion saw the troubles it faced, and attempted to take over the main versions via a pitch. One of these pitches featured Kashyyyk with high quality outsourced, and Playstation 2 assets. Rebellion promised low production costs and a tight deadline, convincing LucasArts. Free Radical Design were not informed of this until Rebellion and LucasArts had signed everything. Rebellion now had control over the majority of the game, however the successful pitch soon backfired. The targets set by Rebellion’s management were impossible to fulfill, and in the end, the main versions were dropped. The PS2 version of the game was also eventually dropped due to the loss of marketing there would have been for Free Radical Design's version. It would have been identical to the PSP version, but with two-player splitscreen, and higher quality assets. It was a fully completed game, and ready to be sent to Sony for submission. The PSP and NDS versions released on November 2009, rebranded as Elite Squadron. Trivia *Did you know that the leaked 'r70217' build from 2016 was first found in a Rebellion XDK? *Did you know that after the game was signed, Free Radical Design bought all of its employees a high quality lightsaber? *Did you know that the Battlefront III logo is in Elite Squadron's (PSP) files? (NEWDATA_ITALIAN)